


Premeditated

by kittybenzedrine



Series: Timelines [62]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dismemberment, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Murder, No Sex, Non-Linear Narrative, crime of passion, premeditated murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:06:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29819157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittybenzedrine/pseuds/kittybenzedrine
Summary: Leo has many, many policies in his line of work, policies that have kept his ass from being caught. If they're cagey, decline. Too much of a risk of them getting a guilty conscience. If they're acting off or too casual, it's likely a cop. Act disgusted and move to a different venue. Move venues often, in fact. Pay close attention to a potential client's body language as well as their words. Judge their behavior with extreme prejudice.A big one for him is to not mix business and pleasure. Don't accept work from people you know, no matter how good the money is. Even if his best friend came to him asking for someone dead, he would deliberate for a long fucking time before making a decision. Leo is absolutely a fucking fool, because knows he'll agree before the words are even out of Renee's mouth."I want him dead, Leo."_____All pieces of the Timelines series are standalones and can be read without context. Mind the tags.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character (Implied)
Series: Timelines [62]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/728796
Kudos: 4





	Premeditated

Leo is several hundreds of thousands of dollars richer as of this evening, which he often doesn't think is a fair trade-off. For what he's doing, it should be millions. This is intensely hard work followed by tedious, equally difficult labor. But that amount of money is hard to come by for the average person, and it would only make it that much easier to link him to his _services_.

He would never ask that much of her, anyway.

Each fingernail is peeled off with a careful precision and dumped unceremoniously into the churning brown of the Brazos river, though it's merely an inky black rush at this time of night. Judging by the long, angry claw marks on Leo's arms, there's plenty of DNA under these nails that he would prefer to not be there. He's still pissed about that. He's never this careless, but his emotions got the best of him. It's a fucking rookie mistake. One he can correct, thankfully, but a mistake nonetheless.

Huffing, he tosses the last nail into the water. Both boots are stuck into the mud along the banks, but he isn't worried about boot prints as he unsticks himself. Everything he's wearing is going in the burn pile, and will be lit up with the rest of his trash. The perks of living in the middle of nowhere, he thinks to himself. Burning a shitload of things isn't seen as suspicious, it's economical. Living so far out, trash collections will only take so much. It only makes sense to burn up the scraps.

Glancing down at the blond corpse on the ground, he picks the pliers back up and brushes the dirt off. The teeth have to come out next. They're so white and straight, neat in a way that you can only achieve from years of expensive and extensive dental care. If this body washes up, dental records will easily identify it.

It's tedious and messy work to pull each tooth out. In theory, he only needs to remove the molars. But he doesn't want to risk it, knowing how good bodying IDing has become. Any tooth is an identifying tooth, in Leo's opinion. As such he sits in the darkened park for over an hour with a blond head in his lap, jaw clenched as rips out all twenty-eight of the corpse's teeth. Each one is pitched into the water without a care. There's so much shit in this water that a stray tooth will never be a concern to anyone who may find it. Hell, the teeth may sit in the water long enough to smooth into the shape of a pebble.

Leo is soaked in blood and fluid when he's finished. Both legs feel wet and tacky, the denim plastered to his thighs. It feels like a twisted joke as he thinks it, but he would kill for a shower right now. He's not looking forward to the long drive home with gloves on, barefoot, without his seatbelt and sitting on a myriad of towels that will also require burning. Once he gets home, he's still going to have to wait hours for a shower. 

There's so much to do once he gets home, honestly. He hefts the body up and carries it closer to the water while musing over it. The cleaning, the disinfecting, all the shit he's going to have to toss into the burn pile and thoroughly torch. The horrifying amount of detailing that his car is going to need. All before he can even entertain the idea of washing himself.

The shower will be grand. He's going to sit in the bottom of the tub until the water runs cold. He plans to soak it all in and use all his most expensive, best smelling products as a treat. Hell, he may even wait for the water to heat back up and take a bath after that, too. A nice bath after tonight's work sounds like heaven.

Before that, he has to finish with this lowly sack of shit. Leo sighs, glancing down at the body. What to do next, what to do.

Pulling the cheap gas station pocket knife from his pocket, he examines the blade in the weak moonlight. It was a 'gift' from a friend, for the express purpose of being disposed after use. It was dull as shit when he got it, but now it's wickedly sharp thanks him having spend over an hour meticulously sharpening it last night. It's not going to be sharp enough to cut through bone, but it'll be enough to sever ligaments and tendons. The pliers will do the rest. No fingers means no fingerprints.

It takes much less time than the teeth, thankfully. It's equally as tedious, without a doubt, but it's over much faster. Simply sever the fingers on one hand all the way around, rip them from their sockets, throw them into the Brazos. Harder than ripping off fingernails, sure, but oddly more satisfying. Leo debates on repeating with Sam's toes. He decides against it after a bit, figuring that there's little chance that his feet will be ID'd if he washes up. Fish and turtles will eat the fingers quickly, he hopes. The ankles will become weak in his shoes and detach within a few days.

He spares a look at the water, ticking over his mental checklist. Removing the clothes isn't quite necessary this time, he doesn't think it is at least. He doesn't need to remove the eyes or tongue either, removing genitalia would be completely unnecessary and unsatisfying.

Humming to himself, Leo thinks he's finished. He takes the knife apart using his thumbnail as a surprisingly sturdy screwdriver before dumping the pieces into the water. The watch is pitched in next before maneuvering Sam's corpse and hefting it over to the banks. It's awkward with a hundred and fifty pounds of literal dead weight, but he throws Sam's body as far into the current as he can. 

The body bobs along in the water, a dark bump along a darker, fast moving abyss. It sinks and is swallowed up before it even has a chance to drift out of view.

Good. Clean up time, he guesses. Then he can finally fucking go home.

Renee has been acting off for weeks. Cagey, too, whenever he tries to pry for information about her well-being. Considering her job involves a lot of heavy lifting and she has a young kid, he's been giving her the benefit of the doubt. She's just exhausted, more than likely. At least, that's what he assumed before today. Today she came over with more makeup on than usual and a poorly covered hickey on her throat.

"Are you having an affair?"

She doesn't look at him. The silence and the tears glistening in her eyes make the tightness in his chest feel that much more oppressive. Two trembling hands work into her skirt, anxiously wringing the black fabric.

"I'm married."

Leo crosses his arms and leans back against the wall, watching her shrink further into the couch. Of course. Things were going too well. Of fucking course she's married. Renee is cheating after all, but not on him. Leo himself is the other man. A low, measured breath escapes him while he waits for her to speak. She's going to try to defend herself, more than likely. She'll claim she doesn't love her husband, she wants to be with Leo, she's getting ready to divorce the husband. It's unfortunate, but this isn't the first time it's happened to him.

She peels her shirt off without prompting or hesitation, and the breath catches in Leo's throat. He's never seen her undressed before. They have sex with the lights off, awlays at her insistence. Renee is overweight and covered in burn scars from a childhood accident, and as such he's yet to press to see her naked. It's not hard to imagine she's self-conscious. 

There are more hickies down her neck and across her breasts, but he isn't concerned with those in the slightest. What he's concerned about are the copious amounts of bruises. Renee is a kinky gal, he learned that pretty quickly. That each smack to her ass would make her moan louder, every fistful of hair would make her beg more, a hand around her throat would have her cumming harder. These don't look like bruises that are kink related.

Her arms are littered with splotchy yellow and violet marks, seemingly random, many in the large shape of a man's fingers. There's an ugly bloom of black and yellow across her ribs and Leo can only imagine what made such a horrifying mark. There's even- are those fucking bite marks?

"He abuses me," she says plainly, still refusing to meet his eyes. She's quick about wiping away the tears that fall. "Sam- he said he'll kill me and our daughter if I try to leave. I believe him."

Crossing the room, he kneels in front of her and leans into her lap with a clenched jaw. Cautiously, he reaches out to touch the dark finger marks encircling her forearms, ghosting his fingertips across the bruises. Renee trembles under his touch.

"I told Sarja that I wished he would just fucking die and she- she told me about someone who could deal with that. That she knows someone who could make him disappear for a price." She pulls her arms away, but only to wipe her eyes. "She pointed me to a bar, told me to go on 'X' day at 'X' time and the person I needed to talk to would be at the bar."

The bile rises in his throat as she speaks. Leo's hand runs down the belly he's touched dozens of times, ghosting along bruises that he could never see in the pitch black of his bedroom. Ren flinches when he brushes the one on her ribs, and he meets a pair of teary green eyes.

"I went last Thursday when she told me to, and I saw you and I just- I knew. I knew."

Leo has many, many policies in his line of work, policies that have kept his ass from being caught. If they're cagey, decline. Too much of a risk of them getting a guilty conscience. If they're acting off or too casual, it's likely a cop. Act disgusted and move to a different venue. Move venues often, in fact. Pay close attention to a potential client's body language as well as their words. Judge their behavior with extreme prejudice.

A big one for him is to not mix business and pleasure. Don't accept work from people you know, no matter how good the money is. Even if his best friend came to him asking for someone dead, he would deliberate for a long fucking time before making a decision. Leo is absolutely a fucking fool, because knows he'll agree before the words are even out of Renee's mouth.

"I want him dead, Leo."

Leo has been watching Sam for weeks. Sam's routine is almost second nature to him at this point, such an ingrained part of his day. He pays close attention to his nightly walks in the local nature park that exists along the edge of the river. The park is closed after dark, and he watches Sam hop the fence nearly every night.

The plan is to watch him for another week, to make damn fucking sure that he has Sam's routine down to a T. Leo will be well prepared by then. He'll even arrange to run into him on the trail at some point, laugh a little about being caught out after dark. When Leo sees him the second time, Sam won't be hesitant. He'll allow Leo in close enough to strike and be none the wiser.

The plan went out the window about seven hours ago when he happened to pass Renee and her little family in the store. Her girl, no older than three, was busied with her mother's phone. Her curls, wild and brown like her mother's, were held back in a cute little ponytail and entirely too many colorful barrettes. Lost in her own world, she paid no attention to the various packages landing in the cart behind her.

Renee's lip was busted. Her makeup was heavily caked on, with poorly hidden hickies and a poorly hidden black eye. Sam hovered entirely too close to her, glowering at anyone and everything that dared to cross his path. When he lifted a hand to point at something over Renee's shoulder, she flinched.

He watches Sam hop the fence and counts down five minutes. When the time is up, he gets out and follows.

The new boots are tight and uncomfortable, but he figures out how to walk quietly in them by the time he reaches the gate. He hops it easily. The gravel path is avoided entirely, and he paces through the grassy underbrush. It's significantly quieter than maneuvering on the path and allows him to better hear the target up ahead of him.

Used to being the only person out this late, Sam doesn't bother to hide his presence. He sings loudly and off-key, stopping to violently curse every time he kicks something or stumbles on the uneven path. Beat up shoes loudly drag through the gravel, masking any of Leo's louder steps. Despite some parts of the trail being nearly pitch black, Leo never looses track of Sam. A beautiful beacon in the dark, with all his ugly sounds. His singing stops when he reaches a bench and Leo figures it's time to strike.

Sam only half turns when Leo reaches him, and most sound is cut off when the rope loops around his neck. He fights, as Leo knew he would, swinging and thrashing and being a general fucking nuisance. Tightening the noose, Leo doesn't allow for any slack. He easily side-steps most of the attacks and does his best to wrangle Sam into a more manageable position. He'd like this to be over as soon as humanly possible.

Likely thinking it's a bright idea, Sam drops to his knees in an attempt to catch Leo off guard. Leo merely follows him down and pins Sam with the bulk of his body. When he realizes that his shitty maneuver isn't going to work, he fights _hard_. He aims for Leo's eyes, though Leo's arms take the blunt of the scratches, and makes an awful sound when the rope is pulled tighter.

It takes much longer in real life to strangle someone than it does in movies. In movies, it takes about thirty seconds maximum to have someone dead by strangulation. In real life, it takes about four minutes minimum, and that's if they aren't fighting you like a cat on crack like Sam is. With Sam, Leo finds himself mentally tracking the time. Almost eight minutes, and Sam is still going. Either Leo is losing his touch, or Sam has an incredible will to live. That's alright. All Leo has to do is shift on top of Sam and press both knees into Sam's ribs to restrict further airflow. Leo yanks the noose upward, keeping Sam's head off of the grass.

Eventually, Sam's subdued movements cease all together. Tightening the rope as much as he's able, Leo counts to 300 before finally releasing his grip with a huff. Sam's head limply falls to the ground. Leo nudges him after climbing to his feet, and Sam doesn't move. Rearing back, he delivers a harsh blow to Sam's ribcage. There's several sickening cracks, but the body remains unmoving.

Fantastic. The hardest part is over, at least. Twisting his cheap watch to face the moon, he estimates it took nearly ten minutes to strangle him, plus the extra five minutes of waiting. 

Leo stares at the still corpse on the ground for a long moment, making a mental checklist. There's quite a bit that's going to need to be done before he can dump the useless sack of shit into the river. Shaking his head, he pulls the pliers from his back pocket. He'll need to remove the fingernails first.

**Author's Note:**

> Some self-indulgent violence. Leo is not the soft creature I often make him out to be. I actually had a _much_ longer version of something like this written over a year ago, but the doc was unfortunately deleted. Even being half the size, this one is still better lmao.
> 
> Feel free to comment or hit me with that sweet, sweet Kudos button. I always appreciate it, but it's not required.
> 
> I have [my blog](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com) on tumblr, if you'd like to check that out, though it's mostly unrelated content. I'm not active much on there, but I'll try to get back to you if you'd rather contact me there.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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